At midnight last Saturday morning, Washington DC time, oversight over the performance of ICANN's IANA functions—notably its maintenance of the root zone database of the Internet's domain name system (DNS)—passed from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to ICANN's global multi-stakeholder community.

Perhaps the toughest challenge facing any putatively multi-stakeholder governance process is its capture by vested interests. ICANN is a textbook illustration of this. Ever since its formation, public interest advocates have been engaged in a struggle to assert their influence within ICANN against an onslaught of intellectual property lobbyists, intent on stacking every committee and process with their own trademark, copyright and patent lawyers.